Minister for Innovation, Science, and Economic Development Announces ‘Guardrails’ for TikTok Canada Operations ⇥ canada.ca

There are three agreed-upon policies which, in the airy language of a government press release, seem reasonable enough to apply to all social platforms, yet are only relevant to TikTok. The first is exceedingly vague:

TikTok will implement enhanced protection for Canadians’ personal information, including new security gateways and privacy-enhancing technologies to control access to Canadian user data in order to reduce the risk of unauthorized or prohibited access.

There are no details about what the “new security gateways and privacy-enhancing technologies” are, nor why the sole goal is preventing “prohibited access” rather than “exploitative access”.

The second — complying with the recommendations of the Privacy Commissioner — was already underway, and the third is an “independent third-party monitor”, which seems fine.